Life After Death and the Road to Success

My father passed away about three weeks ago. His death was not unexpected as he had been quite ill at the age of 90. My sisters, mother, kids, and nephews loved him to pieces and were grateful for his long life he had, the time we spent with him, and the time we had together at and after his funeral.

A death in the family is an emotional upheaval. Just the mixed emotions alone – grief, relief, love, appreciation, sadness – were enough to leave me feeling a bit disoriented toward life in general.

In seeing how it took a few weeks for me to feel fully back to work, I want to share my thoughts and feelings about the game of life and business, and how that road can seem twisty and bumpy at times.

My favorite analogy is driving a car from San Francisco to Chicago. Let’s say you are going to leave on Sunday at noon and you expect to arrive early Wednesday morning. Thirty hours of driving, plus a couple of pit stops, rest stops, fill the tank and maybe even a nice meal ought to take a few days.

If you must arrive by Wednesday in the morning, then you better hope that there are no unexpected thunder storms, road construction, slow-moving trucks, detours, mechanical breakdowns, and the like.

Isn’t life like that? We believe we are headed in a certain direction on a particular path… and then, boom! Sometimes it seems that life has a mind of its own. This has been called life getting in the way.

While I was with my mom, sisters and extended family, I knew that my business back home in California was alive and well, although it was very challenging to attend to it. I had to let it go for a couple of weeks, both because of the circumstances as well as my emotional state. This would be like encountering a blizzard while headed to Chicago. I accepted the reality of the situation, attend to the matter at hand, and took a detour.

Do we really always get from point A to point Z with a perfectly executed plan? Do we achieve our goals exactly when we say we will? Well, sometimes and it is glorious. But how about those other times, the ones called life, when the road appears to be under construction and we must make other plans.

Life goes on even after a loved one passes away. Our accomplishments and success also go on, especially if we allow for the unexpected and adjust our course. The main road from San Francisco to Chicago is Interstate 80 and you would travel it for a whopping 1707 miles. When you started off you may have expected to take that road for all of those miles. But if you find yourself on a different road, know that you can still arrive. The journey often looks different than what we expected. Isn’t life like that?